


Unhappy Medium

by shiiki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-06
Updated: 2008-09-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 04:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13896195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiiki/pseuds/shiiki
Summary: In between Severus Snape and James Potter is not an easy place to be. Unfortunately, the average day in Lily Evans's fifth year tends to involve that unhappy medium. An study of the interaction among these three characters.





	Unhappy Medium

Lily had meant to study the brochures, but by the end of fifteen minutes, all she had done was to arrange them in alphabetical order, spread them out across the table, and stack them back up. Twice. She groaned and shuffled them up again. If only there were a pamphlet that said, 'Unsure of what to do with your life? No fear – this is the perfect job for you!' That might fit quite nicely.

She snuck a glance at Sev, who was calmly engrossed in his Potions book, unperturbed by her agonising.

'Sev.'

'Yes?'

'Have you had your Careers Advice talk?'

'Mmhmm.'

'How did it go? Do you have a plan?'

He shrugged noncommittally. 'Potions research? I don't know. You need connections to get into the field.'

'I'm sure Slughorn would be more than happy.' Lily turned this option over in her head. Research was a little dull, but if she got to experiment and create things … well, that wouldn't be too bad. 'Maybe we could …'

'Mulciber offered to speak for me. His family's really well-connected.'

Alarm bells immediately started ringing the moment Mulciber's name was mentioned. Lily knew too well the rumours that circulated around Gryffindor Tower about Sev's Slytherin friends. She could only imagine what sort of connections Mulciber might have. And on a more selfish note, there was no way in hell Mulciber would deign to speak well of _her_ as well.

'I don't know, Sev – I wouldn't trust him not to have some ulterior motive there …'

'Look, I can go just that much further with a sponsor in good social standing. The Mulcibers are old pure-bloods—'

It felt like a slap. 'Since when did that matter to you?'

'I mean, they have a good family name,' he corrected quickly. 'And if they think I'm talented enough to be worth supporting, that's going to mean a lot.'

'Just because you do their homework for them,' muttered Lily. The pure-blood comment still stung.

'Are you suggesting I'm a suck-up?'

'You don't _really_ believe in their ideology,' Lily told him. 'But you're going along with it just to curry favour with them.'

For a moment, Sev looked angry enough to curse her. Then he shifted his gaze carefully back to his Potions book, but his eyes were so dark and intense, they seemed to be boring a hole through the pages.

‘You don’t know anything,’ he muttered at last. ‘You’re not in my house.’ There was an edge of finality in his voice and a tightness to his jaw that suggested that he didn’t wish to continue the discussion any further.

Lily sighed, letting the subject go although she knew she was right. If Sev truly believed all that blood purity nonsense, he wouldn’t still be sitting here with her. She wished she could convince him that he shouldn’t have to pretend to believe things he didn’t with real friends.

Turning back to the brochures, she supposed she might as well start eliminating implausible choices, such as Quidditch referee-ing. Why on earth did Hogwarts even give them a brochure for that one? It wasn’t as if you needed O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s, just an unholy love for the sport. Lily liked Quidditch as much as the next Gryffindor, but the way some people revered the game (and its stars) was incomprehensible to her.

And speaking of Quidditch stars … it wasn’t easy for her to be distracted from the career pamphlets by a familiar, too-loud laugh a few tables down. She didn’t need Madam Pince’s fierce whisper of ‘ _Potter! Black!_ _Do you_ want _to be thrown out?_ ’ to tell her who the four seated around that table must be.

Her eyes wandered over in time to catch James Potter grinning sheepishly at the librarian. His table was littered with a pile of brochures that looked suspiciously similar to the ones she held in her hands. Opposite from him, Sirius Black was lounging in his chair, balanced precariously on two of its legs. The remaining two members of the group, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, seemed to be the only ones seriously considering the information in the brochures.

_Of course_ , Lily thought, a little wistfully. Neither Potter nor Black needed to worry much about their futures; it was no secret that both were from families with heaps of Galleons in Gringotts and sound reputations in the wizarding world. Whatever their O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. results, they wouldn’t be fully dependent on them to pave their future careers.

Their marks, though, _were_ decent, even if they achieved them with minimal effort. She envied them, sometimes, for the way they could breeze through lessons, making mischief and disrupting class but coming out tops in the exams anyway.

Potter’s head turned then, and his eyes lit on her. Immediately, his grin widened and his hand shot to his hair, ruffling it up so that it stuck up more than ever. Lily tried to hide her amusement – it wouldn’t do to embolden him with encouragement. She ignored the very cheeky wink that he gave her, turning back to her brochures for the third time.

She had managed to form a discard pile for the ones advertising jobs she couldn’t possibly qualify for and was debating whether ‘ _Interested in a fun and fulfilling job in Muggle relations?’_ should be kept (it required an O.W.L. in Muggle Studies, but surely that wouldn’t be needed for a Muggle-born) when an agitated scrape of chair legs made her jump.

Sev had just pushed his chair back and was looking furiously at an approaching James Potter. Lily dropped her brochures right away and closed her eyes momentarily, preparing herself mentally to deal with the clash that was bound to happen.

‘Hello, Evans,’ said Potter, leaning an elbow on the table and smiling pleasantly at her. His fingers raked through his hair again.

‘What do you want?’ growled Sev before Lily could answer. She shot him a stern glance, hoping he’d get the message. If he kept quiet, she could deal with Potter easily enough.

Potter’s eyes darted briefly to Sev. ‘And Snivellus, too. Charming,’ he said breezily.

‘Get to the point, Potter,’ Lily said quickly, seeing Sev’s mouth open in protest of Potter’s derogatory nickname. It was ridiculous, but allowing a fight to escalate in the library wasn’t going to help. ‘And I’d appreciate if you were at least civil to _Severus_ while you’re at it.’

‘Of course. Good thing Evans is here to protect you, eh Snape-y?’

To her horror, Lily noticed that one of Sev’s hands was tightened around his wand on the table. And although Potter looked perfectly relaxed, that hand lolling casually in the pocket of his robes had to be on guard as well.

‘Potter,’ she said loudly, then remembered just in time that Madam Pince was near and modulated her voice accordingly, ‘ _please_ leave us alone.’

‘But it’s such a pleasure to be in your company, my dear Evans. In fact, I was wondering if you would deign to provide me with your presence at the next H—’

‘No,’ Sev practically barked before Potter even finished the question.

Potter raised an eyebrow. ‘I was under the impression I was asking Evans out, not you.’

‘She’ll say no,’ said Sev contemptuously. ‘Better drop it before you get humiliated again.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I’m going to be the one humiliated.’ Potter’s tone was light, which made the alarm bells go off in Lily’s head. There had to be some trick going on here. She threw a furtive glance in the direction of Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew; she wouldn’t have put it past them to send Potter over as a distraction while they carried out whatever plan they actually had in mind.

Black seemed to have anticipated her glance. He caught her eye, face too innocent and smile too bright. None of them were even touching their wands – she could see all three laid in full view on the table.

Her eyes narrowed. This felt more and more suspicious.

‘What if I were to say yes, Potter?’ she hedged, ignoring the outraged fall of Sev’s jaw. Was this response unexpected enough to throw him off course?

‘ _Finally_ she sees sense!’ enthused Potter without skipping a beat. He threw his hands heavenward. ‘Two Saturdays from now, then—’

‘ _Lily_!’ objected Sev. The knuckles clenched around his wand whitened.

‘I said what _if_ , Potter,’ Lily cut in dryly. ‘That wasn’t a “yes”.’

‘It’s not a “no” either,’ he responded cheerfully. He leaned his head closer to her and added in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘You don’t have to be afraid of what old Snivellus will say. I won’t let him hurt you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Potter. Sev, _don’t_ —’

The spell arched from his wand before she could stop him; Potter ducked and it sailed across the room and hit a stack of books. They leapt into the air, to the surprise of the student behind them. Madam Pince’s head jerked up and twisted toward them like a dragon spotting prey.

‘Get lost,’ Sev snarled at Potter.

‘ _Stop_ _it_!’ Lily slammed her hands down on the table, exasperated enough not to care about the noise any more. ‘Potter, I am _not_ going out with you, and Sev, five points from Slytherin!’

‘And the three of you will _leave_ this library _immediately_ ,’ Madam Pince concluded, practically spitting fire as she bore down on them. ‘You will not return until you each write me a letter to apologise for this _disgraceful_ behaviour.’

Sev didn’t even linger to the end of Madam Pince’s speech. He threw a look of loathing at Potter, then turned his glare on Lily – completely unfair, she thought in annoyance – and snatched up his books without another backward glance. Before she had reached the word ‘ _disgraceful_ ’, he was out the door.

Lily made her apologies quietly and hurried off after him, leaving Potter to attempt his charm on the irate librarian.

‘Sev!’ She expected him to stalk down the corridors, and so it was with surprise that she ran into his lanky frame only several feet away. The brochures she had gathered up quickly and haphazardly spilled from her fingers and littered the ground. Sev stood mutely with his back against the wall as she scrabbled to snatch them back up.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she breathed out, once she’d gathered them all and was standing to face him again. ‘What gives _you_ the right to be angry? Potter came to bother _me_ ; you didn’t have to start casting hexes in the library—’

Sev’s eyes flashed. ‘He’s a smug, self-serving bastard. I don’t like him bothering you.’

Lily rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I know he’s obnoxious. But I can handle him. I’d have sent him back to his table, no harm done, if you hadn’t gone and interfered.’

‘You didn’t have to take points.’

‘I’m a _prefect_ , Sev, and you did cast that – what spell was that, anyway? I didn’t recognise it. Was it a new one?’

Her attempt to divert his anger worked. Sev nodded. ‘I meant to string him upside-down. Take him by surprise. Wipe that unbearable smirk off his face.’

Lily laughed. Tempers cooled, they began to fall in step as they walked away from the library corridor. ‘That _would_ have made for a funny expression,’ she admitted. ‘What’s the incantation?’

Sev’s tone started to take on the pleased, proud note that it always did when he showcased his invented spells to her. ‘It’s non-verbal. Less warning, and it’s less likely to be stolen that way.’

‘You talk as though it’s worth a bag of Galleons.’

‘You’re the one who told me that Muggles patent intangible ideas.’

‘Well, I suppose …’ She’d been talking about computer software, the concept of which Sev hadn’t been able to grasp. He’d thought the whole idea of virtual space ludicrous, until she’d tried to analogise it with spellcrafting.

‘I’ll let you in on it, though. You still have to think the incantation – _levicorpus_.’

She grinned. ‘Can I try it out on you?’

‘No!’ His response was vehement.

‘All right, all right. I’m just kid—’

Her words were punctuated by a sudden squawk of surprise. An invisible string seemed to jerk Sev upwards, ankle-first, and he dangled from the ceiling, cursing furiously as he made a swipe but missed the wand that dropped from his pocket. A second beam of light shot towards him like an afterthought, hitting him squarely in the back and causing a pair of leathery black wings to sprout. They had an odd, zigzagging shape …

Lily fought the urge to giggle as he flailed in the air, looking like an absurd overgrown bat.

The loud guffaws behind her brought her to her senses quickly. The culprits – no doubt about who they were – must have been listening to their conversation the entire time.

‘That wasn’t funny, Potter,’ she said sternly.

‘You’re just saying that.’ His insufferable grin was back in place.

‘I think it suits him,’ observed Black, the expression on his face almost an exact replica of Potter’s.

‘Let him down,’ Lily ordered. ‘Or it’s five points – _each¬_ – from—’

‘Hold your Hippogriffs, Evans,’ said Potter quickly. ‘It’s just a joke.’

‘Anyway, we haven’t a clue how to,’ said Black cheerily. ‘Unless Snivellus would be kind enough to give us the counter spell?’

The reply made both Potter and Black shake their head in unison.

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you to mind your manners, Snivelly?’ called Peter Pettigrew, earning him an approving look from the ringleaders of the group.

‘That’s enough! I’m taking points, I mean it!’

‘Lily, it’s all right,’ said a soft voice. Remus Lupin stepped out from Potter and Black’s shadows. ‘James, Sirius, Peter, let’s go.’

The three boys shrugged and exchanged a look among them that seemed to say, _Oh well, if Lupin’s being a spoilsport about it …_ Black and Pettigrew walked off jauntily, but Potter turned to wink at her and Lupin seemed to wince when he met her eye. Not for the first time, Lily wondered why Lupin never exerted more control over his friends. He was the prefect among them, the one with greater authority.

‘Sev,’ she said when their footsteps echoed away. ‘How do I get you down?’

‘Give me my wand,’ he said flatly.

She did so. Sev released himself with another non-verbal incantation, tumbling unceremoniously to the ground with a loud _thunk_.

‘Oh, Sev,’ sighed Lily, reaching for his arm, but he jerked away from her. ‘You know they meant it as a joke.’ _And a rather funny one, too_ , though she knew better than to say it.

‘Don’t talk to me now,’ Sev gritted out through clenched teeth. He started to brush himself off violently as he walked away from her. The bat wings on his back jerked along with his arms, though he seemed not to notice them.

‘ _Finite Incantatem_ ,’ Lily whispered, surreptitiously pointing her wand at his retreating back. The wings dissolved into nothingness as he too disappeared out of sight around a bend in the corridor. Lily had no compulsion to follow after him this time; she glanced down at the career pamphlets still tucked into the crook of her arm and decided with a heavy sigh to continue her narrowing down of choices in the common room.  



End file.
